Facebook people you may know - where are they all coming from?

[whaddayawannado]

Does anyone else get loads of suggestions of total randoms?

I'm being inundated by hundreds and hundreds of them and I've no idea whatsoever who the heck they are and why they are being suggested to me. Quite a lot are clearly from overseas as well. It's baffling. I don't 'follow' a lot of groups or anything like that.

Any ideas where they are coming from, why they are being suggested and if you know how to stop it happening?

I thought they were friends of friends, names you had searched for and your WhatsApp contacts but I have some random suggestions too. May be from a cookie data capture of other websites and FB thinking it’s smart???

Do you mean friend requests or friend suggestions? I get a few of both but not as many as you. Probably scammers looking for bait. What is your profile picture? All of the random requests stopped when I changed my profile picture to Giant Haystacks 😅

This was happening to my BIL until he realised his profile was set to public.

He changed it to private and it helped.

Mine's always been set to private (not even friends of friends) and the only time I get suggestions or requests from randoms, is if I've posted in a public group.

Mine's set to friends of friends.

Most people I get are either friend or friends, or I have their contact details in my phone.

I assume the others have clicked on my profile.
When I blocked someone due to bullying and they started appearing in my friend's list, suddenly their wife, who I've never had any contact with, or any friends in common, was appearing in my contact list.
I presume he went to check on my using his wife's profile.

He uses FB as a bit of a weapon, so assumes everyone else does too.

The 'People you may know' are generally people there is a connection with in some way...... people I have several 'mutual friends' with generally. I think it seems to suggest people in your phone contacts too.

Don't get hundreds and don't get total randoms.
As a pp said - might be worth checking your privacy settings.

I've recently got a lot of random suggestions, way more than usual, but my profile is set to friends only so no idea where they've all come from.

I have had the very occasional friend request, usually from some fit-looking middle-aged silver fox American doctor or military type. Yeah right. I just ignore them 😂

The incoming hundreds are all 'people you may know' suggestions. I rarely post on FB and don't even have a profile picture set up. I only really use it to keep in touch with a local hobby group and read what's going on in the village FB pages. Other than that, I might do a few likes or comments on friends' holiday photos and whatnot. I don't use Insta or Whatsapp at all, and I only ever use the desktop version and have't accessed FB on my phone.

I'm stumped, I really am.

It's probably the groups you're in then. There's likely to be a hobby in common or something.

To be honest, I don't even notice or scroll through all the suggestions and forget they're there.

I am in two groups, my local choir and a gardening club in the next town.

I can't imagine that my occasional comments on either of those are eagerly followed by dozens of people from Indonesia or random South Africans in safari gear standing beside recently-deceased wildlife. I quite often get American ones with a wedding profile pic too. Why on Earth the FB algorithm thinks I might know these people is beyond me.

Maybe I'll get my adult dc to check my settings, but as far as I remember it is set to friends only, not even friends of friends.